5 Incredible Animes That Deserve A Live-Action Remake
Which shows have the potential to transition from animation to live-action?
If you look at the number of critically-acclaimed and well loved anime shows that have come out over the years, you'll know that there's plenty of epic shonen-centric stories out there to use and distribute to Western audiences. While anime is as popular as ever, transferring it over to the big or small screen has been quite difficult. In fact, they've all pretty much sucked and it's difficult to understand why.
Somehow film and TV studios have managed to take some of the best Marvel and DC characters and create entire worlds that we love, yet any attempt at developing anything anime related has gone down as well as a fart in church. Remember Dragonball Evolution? Don't worry, we're trying to forget it as well.
Just because no-one's done the genre justice before, doesn't mean that someone won't be able too in the future. The first hope for redemption is Andy Muschietti, director of the recent iteration of It and the upcoming Attack on Titan movie. If the live-action movie can replicate the success of the anime, then the floodgates will most likely open and studios will be trying to snap up whatever they can get their hands.
But which source material should they be looking at?
5. Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood
The story of Edward and Alphonse Elric, two brothers who try to bring their mother back from the dead using alchemy and the ramifications of that, is considered by many fans to be one of the greatest animes of all times. In fact, it's so highly thought of among critics and fans alike that - alongside Avatar: The Last Airbender - it's one of two animes to feature in the top 25 of their 250 best TV shows list.
A live-action version was released in 2017, but certain storyline changes took away from what made the show so special. It's such a deep and layered story that telling it over a two-hour film was never going to give it the justice it deserves. If TV networks were considering this for a live-action reboot, all they'd need to do is avoid the mistakes of the movie and focus on the aspects of the shows that fans love so much.
Although the animation on Full Metal is second-to-none, especially in the action scenes, when characters are dealing with weighty subjects like religion, the effects of war, corruption and even genocide, there can be a disconnect between audiences that you wouldn't necessarily if it was given a live-action revamp. That disconnect wouldn't be the case with a live-action remake as human characters are usually more relatable than animations.
If the studio were able to combine the darker topics, along with the Elric brother's own personal redemption story, it would work wonders on-screen and would certainly be more accessible to audiences.